When manufacturing armored electrical cable, it is desirable and often necessary to apply coded information on the exterior of the armor sheath to indicate certain characteristics and/or applications of the various cables. For example, it is oftentimes necessary to readily know the number of conductors and/or the type of conductors that may be inside a particular armored electrical cable without having to locate the end of the cable or terminate the cable to enable the conductors to be visibly seen. However, the material and/or irregular surfaces of the armored cable have made it impractical to use conventional marking methods and materials to permanently and legibly apply coded information to the metallic sheath, especially at sizes that are large enough to allow the markings to be read from several feet from the cable.
Prior solutions have included color coding the armor, attaching a coded label to the armor, indenting the armor, and/or directly printing on the armor. However, color coding and printing methods result in colors or print that is susceptible to deterioration over time and in some instances, becoming unrecognizable. Printing directly on the outer surface of the metallic sheath also results in print that is sometimes unreadable due to the non-planar surface of the outer sheath. When labels are applied to the exterior of the armored cable, the labels become susceptible to damage, can get caught on and potentially tear as a result of contact with foreign objects, especially during installation. Similar to print that is applied directly to the armored cable, indicia printed onto the label is susceptible to damage, being worn away and possibly becoming unreadable. While indenting the cable can be used for permanently identifying the cable, such methods do not provide sufficient contrast to enable ease of identification and further, characters that are produced as a result of indentation, are limited in size (i.e., to the height of the metallic strip that is used to form the outer sheath). Furthermore, these solutions result in increased material costs.